Prison, ecology and stewardship
Mark Humphries writes about hope, hard work and rehabilitation
What image do you have of prison and the prison community? Perhaps you see high walls and ‘razor’ topped fences? You might imagine groups of thugs and villains moping around not doing anything useful.
You might also have read memoirs and thoughts of early Friends who have experienced prison – either because of their faith or as conscientious objectors to military service. You might have read about the work of Elizabeth Fry at Newgate prison. Some readers might even remember stories in the British media about holiday-centre-style prisons. The prison system today, however, is one that aims to challenge and change lives. There are some good stories.
The modern prison service is a very different one to that encountered by George Fox, Elizabeth Fry and other Friends. It is a very different place to the one I encountered when I was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1993. Today, those who run prisons, along with various partners, are more concerned with rehabilitation. The prison service offers courses to inmates that will challenge their offending mindset and seek to change lives for the better. These are not short, tick-box courses – they require input from each individual that participates.
The prison service, through private contractors, now offers a more employment-based education. Every prisoner is offered an educational assessment, and this can be used to create an individual learning plan. The plan can include gaining qualifications in functional skills, literacy and numeracy. This can lead to courses using information technology and employment skills training. The employment training will usually be workshop-based and can result in an industry-based qualification.
The modern prison service is continuing to progress. There are challenging projects that continue to change lives. One is also changing the environment. The men who participate in it are not paid. It is purely voluntary. The group of prisoners involved has signed up to put in hard work and time to look after a plot of land they have adopted. This garden space already had some flowerbeds and trees. It has an ornamental fishpond and an abandoned aviary. It was against this backdrop that the prisoners, with the help of a local charity, started to work. Many of the prisoners were going to re-employ pre-prison skills while others were going to learn new ones.
The aviary has been renovated. It is now a newish, clean and bright potting shed. It is a place to escape the British weather when required. The team also constructed raised beds and some composting bags. The local ecology is changing as small wildflower ponds were dug and other wildlife ‘homes’ put in place. The growing conditions in the raised beds were also natural – no chemicals have been used.
With the valued input from the charity, Greener Growth, the men have been given respect as team members. They have been encouraged to make decisions about what is grown in what raised bed. They have all learned new skills in planting live willow hedges and weaving with willow sticks. The men have shared their harvest with those on the wing (house block) in which they live.
Quaker faith & practice 25.01 says: ‘The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious creator to the inhabitants, and to impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an injury to the succeeding age.’
This thought is over 200 years old. It highlights our responsibility to Creation. This project teaches the prisoners involved a real theology lesson – one deeper than I learned as a Bible college student. The other thing that the project, married to the thought from Quaker faith & practice, teaches is that we are all stewards of the earth.
As stewards we learn that our behaviour has been similar to the Unjust Steward in Luke 16. We have taken and given no thought to the consequences of our actions. Who would have thought that coming to prison would be such an eye-opening lesson in ecology, stewardship and theology.
Mark is a recalled prisoner, a student with the Open University, a freelance writer and is seeking membership of his Local Meeting.
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